I've been here a long time too, on and off. I recall the day when it was a general discussion forum about digital B&W, but for some time it has become a de facto MIS support forum. I'm not entirely sure why, but certainly the subtle denigration of other more expensive inksets hasn't helped.
I'd rather the forum reverted to its original purpose. I hope it's not too late for that. The other place for these discussions is the Lula B&W forum, but TBH, there isn't much expertise there amongst all the difficult characters, and many who do post misinformation. There's also a strong OEM & ABW perspective.
I recall when Roy took the QTR discussion into a separate Yahoo forum, so that program specific issues could be kept (mostly) separate. My view is that there's a strong case for Paul to take the MIS specific discussion to a separate forum. I would not be averse to moving this and the QTR forum to .io
I feel for the disgruntled MIS customers, really. It would really frustrate me if I were in this position, having found an affordable supplier that I wanted to use, who then let me down badly. It's definitely not a good look for the non-OEM market, especially when there's so much FUD around about non-OEM inks anyway.
---In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, <forums@...> wrote :
I have been on this group for 12 years (well before starting at IJM only a half year ago) and I can assure you that it was not always MIS related. Those of us who are not using or talking about MIS have been silenced and generally made to feel unwelcome. The rest of us have basically stopped posting helpful information and prefer to speak in private, or on other forums that are more friendly to honest discussion of non-judgmental print and ink related topics. We basically have forgotten about this forum due to its strong bias and rather useless discussions (no offense meant). I have monitored it for all these years but have found little of interest to discuss in the past 6 years. It was certainly a vibrant and trend-setting community of folks in the early 2000s when all this stuff was starting for real so it still has a place in my heart, but it’s less than it was. Now that I’m not just a consumer of bw ink printing for artists all over the world, but I’m actually in a roll where I support a community of people using bw ink, I find myself back in the discussions needing to support artists and users wherever they may live and a few of them live here still.
If the group changes to something like MISDigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint (as david suggests) I would very happily start a group at groups.io called TheOriginalDigitalBlackandWhite and invite the level-headed among us to join. Oh, that would be a great day indeed! (do I need to put an irony sign here?)
But for real though. Don’t change the name please. There are a ton of lurkers here who have valid thoughts, opinions, and tons of knowledge that just don’t post because they get pounced upon. I think it’s good to openly discuss the direction that this forum has taken over the years and maybe reset the track a bit to include a wider bunch of people who have just gone elsewhere or stopped posting on forums all-together because of their experiences here.
regards,
Walker
ps: As I write this, I’m reading Paul’s post about being banned from the Piezography customer support forum. That forum is dedicated to Piezography products. When people create workflows untested by us using products not made by us, we get support calls from customers trying to do the new cool thing (thinking that it came from us) that go on for weeks and months while we are trying to build a really specific vision for what we’re all about (this has happened a few times since I came on board). I don’t know the details of what went on because frankly I never had a need for the support forum at IJM so never registered there until starting at IJM, but I can guess that was part of it. Experimental stuff is best discussed on non-company-specific forums I think, this one being one of the first although it has drifted as I wrote above. I think you would find a healthy level of respect for you at IJM, Paul, even though the customer support forum is a much more boxed space dedicated to IJM specific topics. As a fellow experimenter I can assure you that I understand your motivations in regard to making a product better or more adaptable. But, I think that it’s important to understand the microphone’s placement and its effect on others; and to understand others perspectives or sensitivities related to your stature and practice in the print world and how you use that stature and opinion to push product and tell people that other products are inferior. Some spaces are supposed to be brand neutral, the IJM customer support forum is/was/has-always-been not brand neutral. That is why it exists. The IJM forum does not relate in any polar way to the DigBW forum what-so-ever and serves an entirely different purpose although it’s started to become the de-facto printer maintenance resource for epson users . . . . like I said in my original post on this thread, maybe it’s time that MIS start a customer support forum . . . .
I believe that David is entirely correct in his assessment. The overwhelming posts on this thread are about MIS inks.
I understand that I might engender some criticism when I state that perhaps the title of the group should be changed to reflect the emphasis on MIS products. There might be another group that is a bit broader in emphasis and might be more properly included in the original title. In so doing those who do not use MIS products, and have no immediate plans to do so, could view the MIS thread as desired.
Simply a thought not meant to inflame those who use and recommend the MIS products.
Elliot